by The EnvisionaryRugs have always been part of our home makeup, giving style and filling spaces, but what if they could be part of a more personal story to us? Here’s how.
Client: Lovable & Bespoke Rugs (Rug Couture) Location: UK Challenge: To change people's perception on rugs and see them as part of a growing eco-family, and feel part of the process in finding (or crafting) their ideal rug
The Background
There’s something about rugs. I never realised just how much I missed having rugs in my home until I was away abroad from the UK and lived in a place where there were only floorboards (albeit underfloor heated floorboards).
Rugs, and carpets, have had an interesting journey, from being nowhere, to everywhere, to nowhere again, and more recently rugs, in particular, are becoming very popular again.
Only this time it’s different. Rugs bring warmth to a home, as well as style and character, but they are also dirt traps and in the past caused lots of silent respiratory problems, but today rug makers are much more mindful of the natural, sustainable, and health-minded needs of the products we have in our home.
Whilst it’s not just the materials being used within rugs that are changing, it’s their very function.
With welcome rugs, some very smart people are turning the dirt on its head, and selling rugs and doormats based on their ability to catch and absorb the dirt so the dirt doesn’t go elsewhere in your home, and making rugs the first port of call when you enter your home with personalised, bespoke messages that give customers a welcome home or a motivating message before leaving the house.
Working with the client of Bespoke Lovable Rugs the aim was to allow people to care about their rugs more, so they would think of rugs more like magic rugs, with an identity and story behind it that was personal to them.
The Story Aim
The first challenge was to ensure customers didn’t just buy a rug for its pattern, but for its meaning.
When clients buy something bespoke they don’t mind paying more for it so long as it ticks all the boxes for them, but we had to ensure that they wanted to buy eco-friendly products, and that their purchases were also doing their bit to help the planet, yet that message also didn’t have to be forced or set in guilt for not doing so.
It had to be something they WANTED to do, so as part of the bespoke ‘journey’ the customers could either see a story behind a ready-made rug or collate their own story to a rug that they were part of the design process of.
With so many rug companies out there today it can become difficult for the customer to choose, so when you create a ‘journey’ that allows them to feel like they are buying ‘their’ rug, made for them, then they choose you.
Some customers would simply just want to buy a rug that would feel at home in their place, and the story was part of creating this relationship, whilst others would want to be part of the entire storytelling (so much so that they could become ‘designers’ and allow their design story to be sold on would also give them a percentage of follow-on sales if others wanted their designed rug too).
We wanted to feel that even something like rugs, which might seem mundane to some people, can actually create a community of people coming together to design eco-led styles that bring more meaning home with them, and which can push each other to be creative.
The Solution/s
To get customers to want to be part of the process we had to make the process easy for the customer. Most rug stores in-house have mountains of rugs piled up collecting dirt, and online stores just seem to focus on a simple picture, quick description, and price.
There’s no story there, no reason to feel that this is the rug for you. We wanted to help people decide if that rug ‘fit their style’ by giving a rug a name, a background story, and an indication of the kind of rug they were (like a person’s character), so you can match it to your personality.
So, when you search for a rug either in-store or online you can find it by its styled name and connect to the story.
We also wanted to make it easy for people to find the right size and shape, so we included a feature that would allow them to view a rug in their home before buying (or crafting) it. They could simply take a photo of their room and through AR the rug could be seen in their room (not a perfect fit but a much better guideline than no visual idea at all).
Another part of the connected journey was to simply show how to look after your rug, like you would a pet, with washing instructions and tips and tricks to get the most life out of your rug, style options in terms of what other home products your rug could go well with, shape visual options, quality & sustainability stamps and info, pile and wool type, and links to rug buying guides etc.
And with all rugs, the stories directed people towards the benefits of eco-friendliness to be able to look after their rug the easiest.
The overall aim was to ensure throughout the buying process the user should feel that they will find the rug that will be perfect for them so they can feel confident about going ahead and buying it, and if they still aren’t sure then there’s the option to ‘find their match’ by putting in what they are looking for and seeing the suggested items.
Even if a customer was thinking about bespoke creations, the inspiration other rugs can give them can help them craft their ideal rug, so a ‘craft your own rug’ bespoke link was also created on each buying page (we also played around with a magic carpet (or rug) angle, where customers would get 3 wishes like the genie in Aladdin, with wishes being the 3 bespoke options they could choose).
The Discarded Solution/s
Usually, the discarded solutions are left out because they were only part of the creative process and not all ideas are good ideas, but in this project, there were a couple of great ideas that might work for someone, but for this particular project they didn’t fit the constraints such as budget.
The first one was about developing a ‘matching engine’ that would help the customer match their home decor and then suggest the right rug style for them, or to pick a rug and then suggest other decor and products around that could match it. The solution could lead to a lot of affiliations but the company wanted to focus on its own offerings which was understandable.
I also had an idea that would give the leftover ‘offcuts’ a home, but this idea was (ironically) scrapped, as it wasn’t seen as viable at the time (EDIT: since Covid forced more people at home to be resourceful it’s actually starting to spring up).
The idea was to have a section for ‘offcut’ rugs that were like the unwanted guys, but who could still be something for someone else (a bit like how animal rescue centres have runts of the litter but to someone they could be the perfect companion).
The idea really was about a 0W (zero waste) policy. You’d be surprised just how many carpet and rug offcuts go to waste, but if there was an option to allow customers to upload their offcuts easily so others can find them and use them (ideally in the same local area) then waste would go down.
The idea was to ‘Give an offcut a home, and don’t let them go to waste’. At first it might seem a bit pointless to give away a little bit of leftover, but the idea was to adopt the same approach as the main rugs and give them a story and pull on the heartstrings a little bit, but the real selling point was to again suggest what people could do with offcuts.
People are always getting free samples sent out in delivery, so why not utilise small pieces and put them to use in different ways, as patchwork could see creative people turn offcuts into trendy styles on handbags, jeans, artwork, or whatever else they could imagine. Offcuts could be utilised to also create adaptable and changing patterns to your floor layout to make your space even more personalised.
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